It was a rough winter.
So when Rome and Unferth came to me last week, as the first icebergs in the harbor cracked open, it was easy for them to convince me to perform in their Baldur’s Night feast, as a sendoff for their temporary Vinland Valkyrie. Our show would open the season for the arrival of spring, and then Unferth and I would charge back to the mainland to seek out my sacrifice.
And here I am, ready to perform the Valkyrie part on Baldur’s Night. It’s a holiday about hope, when across the USA we celebrate the god of light and his epic journey back to us from the darkness of Hel. He brings the sun with him, and the promise of summertime. Though on Vinland the ice remains, and there won’t be flowers for weeks, winter is officially over.
I smile just to think of it. By the next high holiday, Disir Day, in six weeks, I intend to be back in Philadelphia, sitting at my throne beneath the New World Tree.
My eyes in the mirror flash, and I lean nearer to see what rune will appear today. I hope for journey, because it’s time to move on, or fate.
But there, winking beside my pupil, is chaos.
Startled, I blink rapidly. Never before have I seen this rune.
It means upheaval, a moment when anything can happen. Anything can change.
Chaos probably reigned in my stars the night I climbed the Tree. Under chaos destiny breaks and even Freya, the goddess of Fate and magic, cannot see true. I take a calming breath.
The center cracked/no future seen/we fly into the chasm of fate.
With the thinnest makeup brush and liquid eyeliner, I paint the dangerous rune onto my thumbnails.
The back of my neck heats and I glance higher in the mirror to see him there, Ned the Spiritless leaning indolently against the door frame behind me. With him comes a spill of applause from the crowd waiting in the feast hall, but Ned’s expression is skeptical, studying my reflection. My heart pounds harder and I wonder what he would say if I told him I see chaos. But I tuck the surge of excitement away and lift my eyebrows. “Do I not suit?”
“Signy the Valkyrie,” he drawls. His pale eyes meet mine.
He’s already in his costume for the feast, where he plays court poet to Rome’s king. It’s a long wool shirt cut tight against his lean torso, a tooled belt, and loose dark pants tucked into heavy leather boots. His sword hangs over his shoulder, sheathed in a baldric that slashes a line from his right shoulder to his left hip.
Ned stalks from the door to me. He takes up the iron collar from the dressing table, the final piece of my costume, and with exaggerated concentration pushes aside my braids to clasp it about my neck. His hands linger there.
“Such a lowly thing for a Valkyrie to do,” he murmurs.
Though I agree with him, I raise my chin. “It isn’t lowly by virtue of a Valkyrie doing it.”
He laughs—just a single bark of a laugh—and leans his hip against the table to take weight off his injured leg. His gaze sinks to my mouth.
Elisa of the Prairie whispered to me once that her husband’s first kiss brought the nine worlds together for a single moment. Brynhild was awakened from a curse by the kiss of her true love. Signy Volsung kissed her husband and instantly knew she would destroy him one day. She said, My heart does not smile with his, before burning his castle to the ground.
I want to know what will happen if I kiss Ned Unferth.
But he glances away and pulls a flask of screech from his pocket. I stare at his neck as he drinks, until he offers it to me. I take it, warm from his hand, and put my lips where his were. I toss back a sip that burns down my throat.
As he screws the cap back on he says rather casually, “I’m to tell you we’re running twenty behind from the extra crowds. Rome says you can choose a big entrance or come with me and take your place at the throne. But I know you’ll choose the former.”
“What’s the point of a small entrance?” I shrug. It’s the heart of my problem with the council, with my riddle, after all.
He hesitates, then gives a sharp nod and leaves.
I head outside to prepare Red Stripe.
Equal parts historical attraction and carnival, the festival has taken over an entire meadow just outside the town of Jellyfish Cove. As I march quickly through the muddy lanes to the pancake booth, I’m surrounded by re-creations of thousand-year-old sod houses, a smithery, and a spiral of canvas tents thrown open for selling traditional Viker fare and fried foods, dragon masks, and wooden swords and jewelry. Tourists in puffy, colorful coats stream through the aisles, pointing at the girls demonstrating how to feed our pygmy mammoth or at the smith’s apprentice as he works the giant bellows while the smith pounds out a red-hot sword. Iron-smelting bloomeries squat like man-sized eggs along the road, tended by two kids in long tunics and fur coats. Reenactors in old Viker costumes demonstrate weapon forms, and two elder ladies in apron dresses teach tourists to weave at the standing loom. On two small stages across the meadow, players compete for the crowd and hat tips, and soon they’ll usher their audiences to the feast hall to eat roast boar and drink fine mead while Rome presides like a king of old over poetry contests or boasting games.
Today the meadow is decked out for Baldur’s Night. They’ve put up evergreen boughs and chalked sunbursts onto the tents and booths. Prayer flags flap in the sharp breeze. The air smells like ice and grease and tangy iron. Slush and mud slip under my boots, and yelling and laughter attack my ears. There is no room for peace here, and I love it.
The impromptu troll cage is a small shed on the side of the meadow nearest to town, where most of the electric hookups are. Melting snow pours down the sheet-metal roof, dripping in long streams to the rocky earth, where it forms a moat of mud and ice I easily step over. An evergreen bow shakes glitter onto my face as I jerk the door open.
Beside the bolt lock is a heavy switch that controls the UV lights rigged to the inner ceiling. When I flip the light switch a dull hum clicks off. I unlock the door, then shove it back with my hip in order to keep my eyes on Red Stripe.
He’s a statue of himself, pale blue and mottled with gray. His arm wraps protectively about his ducked face. His shoulders slump; his tusks are only cracked points of stone.
As I watch, dust flakes away from his skin and settles onto the mangy rug covering the floor. Tiny fissures appear all over his body and a thin layer of stone skin sloughs away. He shakes all over and groans.
Red Stripe rubs his tiny yellow eyes. In the cool light streaming through the windows set high enough the sun won’t ever touch him, that brilliant line of scarlet lichen stretching down his spine seems to bleed.
“Good evening,” I say loudly enough for him to easily hear, and set down the plate of toutons and molasses I brought from the pancake booth. Trolls are supposed to be carnivores, but theses cakes are Red Stripe’s favorite. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
He grunts thanks. Though he can say my and Unferth’s names and responds to commands, he seems to prefer communicating without words. Unferth teases me it’s to do with my mothering style.
While he eats, I go through into the small back room and grab the long broom. The handle is smooth and warm in my hand, thanks to Red Stripe’s amazing ability to fill the whole shed with his body heat. I brush him, scrubbing the remaining rock dust from his shoulders, from the creases of his elbows, and most important from under the heavy iron collar connecting him to the massive chain bolted three meters into the ground. I don’t believe he requires it, but for the comfort of the Summerlings and Coveys from town, who aren’t used to trolls at all, much less tame ones, we leave him trapped. He tilts his head and raises his arm for me, and his wide lips relax against his blunt tusks.